All The Times James Bond Drove American Cars

James Bond has immaculate taste in British automobiles. In some of Ian Fleming’s original novels, he drove a 1930 “Blower Bentley” 4½ Litre, his first movie car (from Dr. No) was a 1962 Sunbeam Alpine, and then of course there’s the character’s long-running love affair with Aston Martin. Ranging from the classic DB5 to the modern DBS Superleggera, 007 really loves anything with that enameled wing badge.

That said, the MI6 spy has also been known to dabble in German cars (BMW had a product placement agreement for three of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond films), a one-off Toyota 2000GT roadster, and even the occasional French machine. But the spy with the license to kill always seems most out of place when he’s driving American cars. That hasn’t stopped him, however – James Bond is as happy to destroy a Mustang in a car chase as he is a Lotus Esprit.

6

1969 Mercury Cougar XR7 Convertible

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the only Bond film to feature Australian actor George Lazenby in the main role, and it’s also the only one to feature a Mercury as the hero car. Lazenby’s Bond falls head over heels for Countess Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo, whose totally mod choice of wheels may have been part of the appeal. Her 1969 Mercury Cougar XR7 convertible features a 428-cubic-inch Cobra Jet V8 and four-barrel carburetor, giving it 335 all-American horsepower. Tracy proves to be an adroit driver, maneuvering the massive Merc through an icy Swiss town to evade SPECTRE agents, including the sadistic Irma Bunt. Crashing (literally) an ice race proves to be the villains’ undoing, as Tracy uses her massive Cougar to push the pursuing Mercedes into a barrier, whereupon it explodes moments after Bunt and her henchmen

escape.

The car seen in the photos above is one of the three (or four, depending on the source) XR7s used during filming. It was fully restored in 2020 and sold at a Bonham’s auction the same year for a staggering $481,000 and change (exceeding its $200,000 estimate), a testament to the provenance a real-life Bond car commands.

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5

1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1

Diamonds Are Forever, 1971

In 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, one of Bond’s many love interests served up some classic American muscle by way of a contemporary Ford Mustang Mach 1 with a Cobra Jet 429-cubic-inch V8. In the movie, diamond smuggler Tiffany Case owns the Mustang, which is most famous for its rather campy car chase through Las Vegas. Bond, having hijacked the car from Tiffany, hits an obstacle to put it up on two wheels, allowing it to scoot down a narrow alleyway and escape local authorities. The scene wasn’t perfect, however; the alley entry and exit were shot at two different times, and although it enters on its passenger-side tires, the Mustang emerges on the driver’s side.

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4

1974 AMC Hornet X

The Man With The Golden Gun, 1974

In what is potentially the most nonsensical product placement of any movie in history, American Motors Corporation paid big bucks to have two of its models feature prominently in Roger Moore’s The Man With the Golden Gun. The cars see their big debut in Bangkok, Thailand, when Bond swipes a 1974 AMC Hornet X from a local dealership in hot pursuit of villain Francisco Scaramanga’s AMC Matador. The line between comedy and action barely existed in The Man With the Golden Gun – when Bond lines up his Hornet with a busted bridge over a river, the director decided it’d be fun to accompany the 360-degree corkscrew jump with a slide whistle.

And in an era when Bond gadgets got weirder and weirder, Scaramanga’s Matador also turned into an airplane thanks to a wing and jet engine attachment that fastened to the roof, allowing the villain to escape from Bond’s grasp. Whether AMC got its money’s worth from the placements is up for debate – the company struggled through the rest of the 1970s before an ill-fated partnership with Renault ultimately led to its absorbtion by the Chrysler Corporation in 1988.

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3

1989 Kenworth W900

Licence To Kill, 1989

One of the little-known American vehicles James Bond drives, the Kenworth W900 from Licence to Kill is yet another oddball product tie-in. Kenworth even introduced a line of 007 special editions in 1990 to commemorate the truck’s appearance in the movie. Timothy Dalton, as Bond, commandeers the one of the four villain-owned W900s near the film’s climax, and since each is towing a tanker full of cocaine-laced gasoline, massive explosions were a foregone conclusion.

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2

1996 BMW Z3 1.9

GoldenEye, 1995

Save your comments, because there’s a case to be made for the BMW Z3 being the first “real” Bond car to come from America. Built in South Carolina, the Z3 was only the second American-produced car that Q Branch ever modified (the first being a 1966 Pontiac Parisienne from You Only Live Twice), and it was the first built specifically for 007. Appearing in the 1995 film GoldenEye, the Z3 kicked off a three-film agreement between Eon and BMW. Equipped with a 1.9-liter four-cylinder engine, Bond’s first Bimmer didn’t actually see much action, but a 007-themed Z3 special edition sold exclusively through the 1995 Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog placed the vehicle firmly in the MI6 zeitgeist.

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1

1957 Ford Fairlane Skyliner

Die Another Day, 2002

The final American-built car to receive “hero” status in a Bond film is the 1957 Ford Fairlane Skyliner seen briefly in Die Another Day. The 2002 film marked the final Pierce Brosnan installment, but it was also 007’s return to Aston Martin via a lucrative product placement from Ford, which owned the British carmaker at the time. Bond borrows the ’57 Fairlane from a contact in Cuba, a blink-and-you’d-miss-it homage to 1965’s Thunderball – SPECTRE antagonist Count Lippe owns a similar model. In addition to the Fairlane and new-for-2002 Aston Martin Vanquish, Ford also supplied the film with a coral red Thunderbird driven by Halle Berry’s Jinx, plus a green Jaguar XKR convertible driven by secondary villain Zao and an Explorer SUV made up to look like the drop-top kitty for the chase scene in Iceland.

Sources: MI6 HQ (fan site), 007.com